UK tabloid prints naked Prince Harry pictures

Prince Harry through the years – Prince Harry celebrates his 30th birthday on September 15. The prince has grown up in the public eye. Take a look back as the young prince matured into adulthood:

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Prince Harry through the years – Prince Charles and Princess Diana leave St. Mary's Hospital on September 16, 1984, with newborn Prince Harry.

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Prince Harry through the years – Prince Harry stands with Princess Diana for the national anthem at the Wales versus Australia match during the 1991 World Cup in Cardiff, Wales, on October 12, 1991.

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Prince Harry through the years – Princess Diana and Prince Harry are accompanied by family friend Catherine Soames and her son, Harry, during a skiing trip in Lech, Austria, on March 24, 1994.

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Prince Harry through the years – Princess Diana, from left, Prince Harry, Prince William and Prince Charles gather for the commemorations of VJ Day on August 19, 1995, in London.

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Prince Harry through the years – Charles, the Prince of Wales, and his son Prince Harry stand for the anthems during the Wales versus Scotland game in Cardiff, Wales, on February 17, 1996.

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Prince Harry through the years – Left to right: Princes William, Harry and their father Prince Charles wait in front of the Westminster Abbey in London after the funeral ceremony of Diana Princess of Wales on September 6, 1997.

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Prince Harry through the years – Prince Harry stands in the Drawing School on May 12, 2003, between two of the works he completed while studying at Eton College. His work involves a mixture of painting and printing, and reflects his habit of using animals as his starting point.

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Prince Harry through the years – Prince Harry takes part in the Wall Game at Eton College in March 2003.

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Prince Harry through the years – The youngest son of the Prince of Wales, Prince Harry makes a slice of toast in his house kitchen situated in the house library, which is the preserve of the senior House prefects, in March 2003 at Eton College.

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Prince Harry through the years – Britain's Prince Harry, right, and his father The Prince Of Wales play polo for The BFF/Highgrove Team in a match for The Indian Cavalry Polo Trophy in Tidworth, England, on July 12, 2003.

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Prince Harry through the years – Prince Harry paints in Eton College's new Drawing Room on May 12, 2003.

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Prince Harry through the years – A man reads the New York Post newspaper on January 13, 2005, featuring the "Royal Nazi" headline about Prince Harry who attended a fancy dress party wearing a khaki uniform with an armband emblazoned with a swastika.

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Prince Harry through the years – Britain's Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Harry share a joke as they watch Prince Charles and his bride Camilla Duchess of Cornwall leave St. George's Chapel in Windsor, England, following their marriage blessing on April 9, 2005.

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Prince Harry through the years – Prince Harry takes part in the Trooping Of New Colours alongside his fellow officer cadets at the Royal Military Academy on June 21, 2005, in Sandhurst, England.

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Prince Harry through the years – Prince Harry sitting below the turret of his Spartan armored vehicle as he communicates with other units by radio, in the desert in Helmand province in Southern Afghanistan, on February 20, 2008. The 23-year-old, an officer in the Household Cavalry regiment, secretly served for several weeks in the volatile southern province of Helmand.

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Prince Harry through the years – Princes William and Harry are seen at a Royal Air Force base near Shrewsbury in central England on June 18, 2009.

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Prince Harry through the years – The British royal family poses for a portrait in the Throne Room at Buckingham Palace in London on April 29, 2011.

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Prince Harry through the years – Prince Harry skis with the Walking with the Wounded team, who have gathered on the island of Spitsbergen, Norway -- situated between the Norwegian mainland and the North Pole -- for their last days of preparation before setting off to the North Pole by foot on March 29, 2011.

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Prince Harry through the years – Best man Prince Harry and Maid of Honour Pippa Middleton appear on the balcony at Buckingham Palace after the royal wedding of Prince William to Catherine Middleton on April 29, 2011.

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Prince Harry through the years – Prince Harry climbs on board a specially decorated golf buggy as he goes on a tour of Harbour Island in Nassau, Bahamas, on March 4, 2012. The Prince was visiting the Bahamas as part of a Diamond Jubilee tour as a representative of Queen Elizabeth II.

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Prince Harry through the years – Members of the British royal family wave to the crowds from Buckingham Palace on June 5, 2012, as part of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee celebrations.

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Prince Harry through the years – Left to right: Carole Coe, Prince Harry and Peter Phillips enjoy the atmosphere as they watch track cycling at the Velodrome on August 7, 2012 at the London 2012 Olympic Games.

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Prince Harry through the years – Prince Harry was deployed to Afghanistan as an Army helicopter pilot, the UK military announced on September 7, 2012.

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Prince Harry through the years – Prince Harry races out from a tent to scramble his Apache with fellow pilots during his 12-hour shift on November 3, 2012, at Camp Bastion in Afghanistan. Prince Harry served as an Apache helicopter pilot and gunner.

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Prince Harry through the years – Prince Harry salutes aboard the Australian warship HMAS Leeuwin during the International Fleet Review in Sydney on October 5, 2013.

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Prince Harry through the years – Prince Harry, Ivan Castro and their fellow adventurers reach the South Pole as part of their Walking With the Wounded charity trek on Friday, December 13, 2013, in Antarctica.

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Prince Harry through the years – Prince Harry and Prince William help soldiers build a flood wall at Eton End School on February 14 in Datchet, England.

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Prince Harry through the years – Prince Harry hits a baseball while participating in drills at the Harlem RBI baseball youth development program in New York City on Tuesday, May 14.

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Prince Harry through the years – Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge; Prince William, Duke of Cambridge; and Prince Harry visit the Tower of London's ceramic poppy installation on Tuesday, August 5. The installation was part of the commemoration of the 100th anniversary of outbreak of World War I.

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Prince Harry through the years – Prince William, Prince Charles and Prince Harry look at a mobile phone as they watch the Invictus Games on September 11, 2014, in London.

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Story highlights

St. James' Palace: "We have made our views on Prince Harry's privacy known"

The Sun is the first mainstream UK newspaper to publish the photographs

It says there is "a clear public interest" argument for their publication

Prince Harry was in a hotel suite in Las Vegas when the naked snaps were taken

Tabloid The Sun on Friday became the first mainstream British newspaper to publish photographs of a vacationing Prince Harry in the nude.

The pictures of the prince, showing him naked in a hotel suite while he was on vacation last week in Las Vegas, were widely available on the Internet after website TMZ published them Tuesday. But British newspapers initially declined to publish them.

The Sun's front page, headlined "Heir it is!" -- a play on Harry's status as third in line to the throne -- shows the 27-year-old prince naked except for a watch and necklace, protecting his modesty with his cupped hands.

A second image widely circulated online, which shows Harry hugging a woman from behind next to a pool table, both of them naked, is also printed in the paper, with a large crown superimposed across his bottom.

The newspaper defends its decision to go ahead with publishing the image as being in the interests of a free press.

"The Sun is NOT making any moral judgement about Harry's nude frolics with girls in a Las Vegas hotel. Far from it. He often sails close to the wind for a Royal - but he's 27, single and a soldier. We like him," the story reads.

"We are publishing the photos because we think Sun readers have a right to see them."

There is "a clear public interest" in making the image available to everyone, regardless of whether they have internet access, so they can join the debate on his behavior, the newspaper argues.

The tabloid is Britain's biggest daily paper in terms of circulation.

A spokeswoman for the Press Complaints Commission, the UK press watchdog, said that it had not yet received a complaint from the Palace in regards to The Sun's publication of the photographs.

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Royal officials had urged the UK media not to breach the prince's privacy by publishing the pictures.

A spokeswoman for St. James' Palace said editors are at liberty to make their own decisions.

"We have made our views on Prince Harry's privacy known. Newspaper regulate themselves, so the publication of the photographs is ultimately a decision for editors to make," the palace said. "We have no further comment to make, either on the publication of the photos or on the story itself, concerning Prince Harry's private holiday in Las Vegas."

David Dinsmore, managing editor of The Sun, said Thursday that his group "thought long and hard about this," but ultimately decided to publish the images because news consumers could access them elsewhere.

"This is about the ludicrous situation where a picture can be seen by hundreds of millions of people around the world on the Internet, but can't be seen in the nation's favorite paper read by 8 million people every day," he said.

Dinsmore also said that The Sun is "a responsible paper and it works closely with the royal family" and that "we take heed of their wishes."

"We're also big fans of Prince Harry. He does a huge amount of work for this country and for the military and for the image of both of those institutions," Dinsmore said. "We are not against him letting his hair down once in a while. For us, this is about the freedom of the press."

Sky News' managing editor, Peter Lowe, wrote in a blog post Thursday that the satellite broadcaster, which is also part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. empire, did not intend to publish because it accepts that Harry "has a reasonable expectation of privacy" while in a hotel room on vacation.

"Clearly millions of people want to see what the third-in-line to the throne looks like in his birthday suit, judging by the clicks on the websites that are showing them," he writes.

"But just because people have a voyeuristic interest in looking at the pictures, it doesn't mean Sky News needs to show them either online or on TV.

"They serve no purpose for our audience and seeing the precise contours of the royal body exposed in all their glory is not in the public interest, even if the public is interested."

The BBC, Britain's publicly-funded broadcaster, also said it did not plan to publish the grainy images -- and it broadcast footage of The Sun's front page with the photo of the naked prince backed out.

"We decided at the very start that there was no public interest in showing the pictures," a spokesman said.

The hesitation to publish such photos, even those of royals, is somewhat new to British papers. Prince Charles, Prince Andrew and the Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson, have all been caught up in tabloid scandals -- with or without embarrassing photos to accompany them.

But things changed in the past 18 months, with the discovery of the full scale of a media phone-hacking scandal. This forced the closure of the News of the World tabloid and prompted an inquiry into British press standards, led by Lord Justice Leveson.

After months of evidence, Lord Leveson is deciding whether to recommend new rules governing the conduct of the UK media. Until his report is ready, analysts have said, editors don't want to take too many chances.

In a blog for the Huffington Post this week, Neil Wallis, former deputy editor of The Sun and the now-defunct News of the World, said the dilemma over whether to use the Prince Harry photographs was "nothing to do with journalistic merit, nothing to do with the merits of the story, nothing to do with legal issues, nothing even to do with journalistic ethics...

"The decisions are being reached on the basis of: 'What will Lord Leveson think?' And that is shocking, it is outrageous, it is a disgraceful affront to free speech."

Some commentators also have suggested that part of the reason for the British media's hesitation is the fact that, in the wake of a series of good news stories including Queen Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee, the royals' stock is higher now than it has been in decades.

Writing in the New Statesman, Steven Baxter claimed the papers were refusing to use the pictures not out of "fear of regulators but fear of their own readers," adding that Prince Harry and his kin "are celebrities, like others, but untouchable ones."

Pending any changes in the wake of the Leveson Inquiry, British newspaper editors are bound by the Press Complaints Commission's Code of Practice, which says that "everyone is entitled to respect for his or her private and family life," and that "it is unacceptable to photograph individuals in private places without their consent."

There are exceptions for cases "in the public interest."

Reacting to the Sun's decision Thursday, Mark Stephens, a British media lawyer, said he wasn't convinced the Prince Harry pictures rose to that level.

"Sun to publish Prince Harry pics. So what's the public interest? Or is it just a blatant publicity stunt?" Stephens posted to Twitter.

Former British Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, referring to The Sun's owner Rupert Murdoch, tweeted Thursday that "tonight's decision by @rupertmurdoch to allow The Sun to print the private Harry photos shows his contempt for the PCC, Leveson & the law."